Tag Archives: Toronto Bartending Schools

Recently Bartenderone launched its University Tour initiative up at Brock Universityâ€™s 2011 Vendor Fair.Â About 5 years ago we tested the water at Guelph University with a two day condensed version of the Bartenderone Masterclass and it was a great success.Â Since then the Bartenderone Masterclass has quickly evolved into the most sought after bartending certificate in Canada.Â What makes Bartenderone different?Â What makesÂ them better thanÂ the competition?Â

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Â Unlike other bartending schools, Bartenderoneâ€™s focus is not on trying spirits and drinks and leaving class â€śhalf in the bagâ€ť and unable to retain any information that you learned.Â Â The focus is on understanding spirit profiles and executing cocktails with the concepts of synergy, accuracy, and speed being the main emphasis.Â Sprinkle in some valuable wine knowledge and high impact, low risk flair techniques and our graduates are better prepared than any others entering into the hospitality industry.

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Being a University graduate myself I can understand and relate to the day to day financial struggles of a student with a full course load.Â Entering my second year at Guelph University my steady diet of Chunky soup and Mr. Noodles became very tiresome and I was becoming very weary of my increasing student debt.Â Like most other students my only solution was to find a part time job to assist me with my problem.Â While home forÂ Christmas break I attended bartending school in Toronto at Bartenderone and became one of the first graduates of the program.Â This certification allowed me to go back to Guelph and immediately find a job barbacking.Â Although I wasnâ€™t making â€śrockstarâ€ť bartender money at first, barbacking was a great stepping stone for me and put a steady flow of money in my pocket to help me survive.Â By third year, after a lot of hardwork and patience, I was bartending 3 nights a week and paying my rent in one week worth of tips!Â All of a sudden I had a large amount of disposable income at my fingertips and the prospect of eliminating my student debt while still a student became a very real possibility!Â Being very conscious of the poor spending habits of my past I put in place a very simple plan to save money that I learned while attending bartending school.Â The result was one year of barbacking, two years of high volume bartending experience, and zero student debt when I graduated!Â There are many part-time jobs available to post secondary students but none of them compare to the potential money you can make once you work in a tip friendly environment!Â Bartending proved so lucrative for me that I became a full-time instructor and mixologist with Bartenderone.Â Work smarter not harder!

I have had the pleasure of working in all walks of the service industry, from roadhouses to fine dining establishments as a bartender, but never in the fast-paced environment of a nightclub until recently…

My nightclub cherry has been popped in Toronto as a flair bartenderÂ and it has been a great experience.Â Going from having no customers one minute to beingÂ completely slammed the next; with no time to breathe or think; and then… bartender instinct suddenly kicks in.

In the world of bartending, nothing is more exciting than flair bartending. Yet in the same breath, nothing has more of a negative image attached to it as well.

The first record of flair bartending is accredited to â€śThe Professorâ€ť Jerry Thomas from San Francisco, who in the mid 1800â€™s included some flair in his Blue Blazer cocktail by rolling flaming Scotch from one mug to another.

The late 1980â€™s saw a big boost in the number of flair bartenders after Tom Cruiseâ€™s character Brian Flanagan wowed his guests from behind the bar in the movie Cocktail.

Have you ever tasted a cocktail and thought hmmm I could definitely do a better job myself? Or maybe you have envisioned what you suspected to be delicious mouth-watering cocktails with ingredients one may never normally use in the bar? Six experienced bartenders from Toronto decided to bite the bullet on the evening of May 30th for the spring finals of the International Bartender Certification and each created some masterpieces that tantalised the judgesâ€™ taste buds on the night.

Over the course of five weeks these bartenders attended the BartenderOne IBC course as students and tasted over three hundred different spirits, bitters, liqueurs, sweeteners, infused foams & spirits and alternate types of citrus and cocktails.

After a very successful Toronto Flair League season premiere, the promoters decided that for TFL 8 it would be fitting to couple the event with an eighties party.

The idea was that all of the bartenders would create a routine choreographed to any song from the 1980â€™s.Â Also, the backgroundÂ music throughout the evening would be all 80â€™s, and all competitors, staff and guests were to dress in the fashion of the era.

Imagine walking into a phone booth, dialling a number, and being redirected back to a world of sipping cocktails next to Charlie Chaplin, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgeraldâ€¦â€¦

On March 11th of this year, IÂ traveledÂ to New York to experience some of North Americaâ€™s finest Speakeasies and Mixology bars. With only having one amazing speakeasy in Toronto, we were eager to head to the Big Apple and meet the bartenders that compete in Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.

Have you wished you could jump behind a bar with hundreds of ingredients, tastes, and ideas and be able to create the cocktail of your dreams?

On April 4th, 2011 the BartenderOne Bar Chef Finals took place at Empire Lounge in Toronto in Yorkville. As students, the mixologists had completed tasting over five hundred different spirits, bitters, liqueurs, sweeteners, types of citrus, infused foams and spirits, along with homemade syrups.

As mixologists, the students were asked to create an original cocktail from each of the 5 spirit categories. The cocktails could have been made with anything that the mixologists could think of; but were required to hold dear the traditional balanced cocktail theory. While they did have guidelines for balance, there were none for flavour profiles or presentation. Mixologists could incorporate elements that were taught in class such as: infusion, fatwashing, bruleeing, molecular mixology, spherification, custom foams, misting and much more.

As the student mixologists watched tentatively, their cocktails were tasted by three of Toronto’s top mixologists; Rob Montgomery, Gavin MacMillan and Scott McMaster. The students were were delighted to see that their hard work and development had paid off. The judges were impressed by all of the thought and effort that was incorporated into the final cocktails. The mixologists showed that they weren’t scared to test some boundaries in coming up with their very own recipes, and here are the top cocktails entered:

One of the challenges that people face when learning how to become a flair bartender, is figuring out where to start. People are very eager to start juggling 4 bottles off the start, but that is bit of a stretch. Begin with easy, high impact – low risk moves that you will be able to execute with confidence with a little practice.

It seems every bar you go to these days, you will see someone throwing bottles in the air, jumping up on the bar, or lighting something on fire.Â Flair bartending is the term used to describe these actions. It is showmanship mixed with bartending to enhance the guestâ€™s overall experience.